


it makes you human

by strangethetimes



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Beverly Marsh is a Good Friend, Blood and Injury, Coming Out, Emetophobia, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Post-Pennywise (IT), Recreational Drug Use, Richie Tozier is a Mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:15:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29852409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangethetimes/pseuds/strangethetimes
Summary: After a particularly rough day, Richie and Beverly get high together.(AKA Richie comes out to Bev)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	it makes you human

The blood is molten lava, hot and sticky and rolling down beneath his shirt until it kisses the waistband of his jeans. It’s drying, albeit slowly, and he can feel it on his face too. The pain is worse, a throbbing stab that washes over him nearly in sync with his heartbeat. He knows there will be bruises, those explosions of galaxy-colored splotches on his freckled skin, and that he’ll have to keep his shirt on when he swims at the Quarry. He only hopes that his face will be clear of any, because the Losers won’t ignore it if he starts wearing Halloween masks in the middle of July.

Lies circle through his mind to deal with the blood alone. Maybe he fell off his bike, or he took a tumble down a hill. But, the lies dissipate when he pulls up to the diner’s curb and Beverly’s gaze falls on his lanky frame, lit up by the neon signs above. She’s mad at him for being late, he can tell by the look on her face, but the anger fades fast, eviscerated like a bug against a zapper, when she sees him. She takes in the battered, bloody look of him with alarm and he knows none of the lies would work anyway.

“Christ, Richie, what happened?” She flings the door open and climbs into the passenger’s seat, throwing her bag onto the floor with little regard for the things that spill out of it. “You look like someone went at you with a fucking golf club.” Her hands fly to his face, grabbing it to inspect the damage, and she’s horrified to find the blood is still a bit wet when she lets go. She finds a dirty t-shirt in the backseat to wipe it off, but it stains her palms regardless. He should’ve warned her. Blood is still difficult for her to see.

“How was work?” he asks, quickly glancing at her before turning onto the main road. “Did you get more tips than last week?”

“You’re dreaming if you think you’re distracting me from this.” She leans the seat back and props her feet against the dashboard, dress slowly sliding up from her bent knees. After a few tries at fixing it, she stops bothering and lets it go. When does Richie ever look anyway?

“It was worth a shot.”

“Stop at the pharmacy on Pasture. I’m gonna grab some stuff for you.”

“Gonna steal it like old times?” he teases. A cold, evil glare shoots his way and he mumbles an apology. There’s no need for any reminders of IT tonight. “Use the money I’ve got in the glovebox.” He knows she won’t, but still hopes.

“Let’s ditch work tomorrow,” she says, slapping her hand against the center console, “you could use the break.”

“I don’t have any PTO.”

“And?” She digs through her purse at the first stoplight and opens an old mint tin with tabs of acid inside. Wordlessly, she puts one on the tip of her finger and offers it to Richie, who sticks out his tongue in answer. Her skin tastes like iron, left over from his own blood, and then she takes a tab of her own.

He waits in the car while she raids the pharmacy and she does, actually, take the money he gives her. He gets odd looks from passersby; some people even laugh, knowing him enough to understand exactly what must’ve happened, but he doesn’t pay attention to them. The presence of the arcade, looming across the street, burns holes into his skin until Beverly comes back.

She whisks him away to the bathroom the second they’re home, having him shower while she unpackages the first aid supplies from the other side of the floral curtain and changes out of her work clothes. They can feel the acid slowly start to take effect, the light and floating feeling beginning to lift them from the ground. It distracts Richie from the pain, how the water makes each open wound sting, and he asks himself why he doesn’t do this every time he gets the shit kicked out of him. But, then, he supposes, he’d probably develop a habit of it.

“You alive in there?” Beverly calls to him, sounding miles away. The patter of the showerhead’s rain overwhelms him, drowning out near everything else, and the places his skin is touched by it feel as though they’re melting. He has to look down just to ensure he’s not slithering down the drain, and it takes a long while before he can process what she asked or what he wants to say.

“Sometimes,” he decides on.

“What are you talking about?” Her voice becomes laced with concern, worried yarn that crochets itself into the tone. He can  _ see _ it, the stitches and loops that, if she talked forever, could become a scarf as red as her hair. He wonders what the other Losers’ voices would sound like, but can’t focus long enough to decide on anything.

“Sometimes, I swear I’m dead,” he says. She shuts the water off for him and tosses a towel over the shower rod, he barely manages to catch it. He wraps it around his waist and the rattle of the curtain rings echoes in his skull. Beverly’s face falls at the sight of him. There  _ are  _ bruises, and they’re worse than either of them could have imagined. She stares at them like they’re growing before her eyes (and they might be).

“Rich, I might have to take you to—”

“I don’t want my folks knowing.” They worry enough. They might pretend not to notice the disheveled states he comes home in, but they  _ do  _ see it. He’s sure they hear the rumors too, and he doesn’t want to think about that.

“Come on,” she sighs, gesturing to the counter, “let’s get you patched up, at least.” He goes to, at first, but gets caught up in his reflection. His irises are eroded away, almost entirely gone.

“My pupils are so fucking huge. Makes my eyes look black.”

“Just sit on the counter,” she gestures again, “and tell me about the fight.”

“Asshole,” Richie mumbles under his breath. He hoists himself up on the counter and a blinding pain rushes from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. He winces, barely audible, but Beverly hears him and a small frown finds her. She starts pouring rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball.

“Was it the guy whose car you egged?” A form of revenge, for when the guy slashed Mike’s tires. Richie couldn’t help it.

“Guess he figured out it was me. He slammed my head against the concrete.” Her hands fly to his head immediately, yanking it down to inspect any possible damage — cuts, bumps, or blood. She doesn't find anything, but doesn’t look any calmer.

“What the fuck is his problem with us?” she groans. He knows that she keeps talking, something about being reckless, but he can’t pay attention. He catches another glimpse of his eyes and feels like he could jump into them. The freckles on his cheeks swell and shrink the closer he looks and, for a moment, he feels entirely too self-aware of who he is.

“Bev,” Richie says. She lifts the edge of the towel to see his scraped-up knees and makes a face. She kneels down to clean them and he flinches at the sting of the disinfectant, but she doesn’t stop.

“Yeah?”

“My eyes are black.”

“I know, you said that.”

“Bev,” he says again, more desperate.

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever feel like you deserve to be hurt?” he asks. Her eyes flutter up from his legs, bewildered, and he thinks her freckles are moving like his. She looks at him like what he’s said is the most heartbreaking thing she’d ever heard a person say, and it makes him want to cry. The feeling starts in the back of his neck and swarms until he feels it in the tip of his nose, a tingling and burning sensation that he can’t bear to feel. He shakes his head, insistent to hold it in, and Beverly still stares at him. There are things she’s come to expect with him, things she’s been anticipating. This wasn’t one of them.

“Richie,” she says softly, crest-fallen, and his breathing starts to feel too fast, “why would you ever deserve to get hurt?” He’s almost hyperventilating, body shaking and eyes glassy. He slumps against where the wall and mirror meet, shutting his eyes tight, when the tears finally fall. They roll down his cheeks in an eerily perfect way, almost like in movies, but it doesn’t stay pretty. Richie’s face scrunches up the more he tries not to cry, turning red once he holds his breath for too long. He slams his head against the mirror — once, twice, three times — before she squeezes his leg to stop him. His lungs force him to breathe in a sudden, gasping bray that throws itself from his throat. He sobs. It sounds pathetic, it _looks_ pathetic, but Beverly doesn’t judge him.

“I’m rotten,” Richie cries. His voice cracks and he sees the color: a deep, dark blue.

“You’re not rotten.” But, he shakes his head again. He’s always thought it, knew from a young age that something had to have been wrong with him because he  _ feels  _ that he’s different and he thinks, sometimes, other people feel it too. Beverly’s eyes go wide, just as dark as his own now, and she frowns.

“Have you been picking fights on purpose?” she asks softly.

“No, not all of them.” He knows, deep down, that he must’ve been doing it subconsciously, but also knows he’s been defending the Losers. Some of them, he supposes, are self-defense. Perhaps that’s a subconscious rationalization too. Richie could, if he wanted, keep his mouth shut more often. He’s torn from his own head, flinching, when Beverly grabs his hand.

“I don’t wanna be here anymore,” he says. It feels like the fluorescent lights are draining the color from his skin, he can watch it float up into the air and disappear. He doesn’t feel real. The only reminders are the bags under his eyes and wounds on his body, almost entirely patched up now.

“What are you talking about?”

“I just have to get out,” Richie whispers, “I think if I stay, I’ll die.” For a second, he almost talks about Eddie, but Beverly looks up at him again and his stomach churns — too self-aware again.

He’s a guy, naked beneath the damp towel, and she’s a girl on her knees, and he feels  _ nothing.  _ Normal guys, all of the ones in Derry that he loathes and treat her like shit, would feel something, maybe make a crude joke about it too, but he doesn’t. He hops off the counter and stumbles to the toilet. Beverly has his curls in her hands as he pukes and he tries to thank her but no words will get through. She rubs patterns in his back and tells him that it’s okay, that everything will be, and he scoffs.

“It’s alright,” she says again.

“No, it’s not.” His voice reverberates off the bowl and he groans. The smell is rotten too, just more of him that’s decomposing from the inside out. Maybe he’s already dead.

“Of course, it is. Why wouldn’t—” he gags again and she stops, but nothing comes out “—this isn’t about a bad trip, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” Richie repeats. He sits up and slouches against the tub, wiping his mouth with the shower curtain. He can take the rap for it later. Wordlessly, they lay on the floor, hands clasped together and the lights off. The popcorn pattern on the ceiling rains down and Beverly’s skin is white-hot. At some point, the wallpaper’s stripes begin to warp like soundwaves, and Richie swears that each playback would sound like Eddie’s voice.

“Bev?” He looks over at her and she smiles, he sees her teeth dance when he blinks.

“Yeah?”

“I think I’m in love with Eddie.” The earth breathes beneath him, flowers sprout between the tiles on the floor and blossom in an outline around his body. Beverly just looks at him, eyelashes blooming with tiny flowers too, and squeezes his hand.

“That doesn’t make you rotten, you know,” she nudges him with her foot, “it makes you human.” And it almost starts up the waterworks again, almost breaks him down into hysterics, but there are no more tears to cry. She can tell, watching his torso hitch with the sharp breath stuck in his throat, though it’s hard to discern from the bruises on his skin that seem to jump up and burst like kernels of popcorn.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You fight,” Beverly offers, “you scream and you cry and you spit and you fight!” Their giggles echo off the walls and embrace them in a warm, tight hug. Their hearts are so aglow with adoration that, they swear, they can see them lit up in their chests and shadowed by their ribs.

“Then what?”

“Then, you keep going,” she shrugs.

“It can’t be that easy.”

“Can’t it, though?” The flowers around them die, withered and wilting, and in their place grow new ones, prettier ones. Something about it is hopeful, perhaps a drug-induced metaphor offered up by their brains for the hope they so often lack, and something about it is sad, but maybe that’s part of the metaphor too.

He wants to ask how she’s so calm, how this isn’t a big deal for her to talk about, but he doesn’t. On some level, even with his senses so impaired, he knows that she knew — maybe everyone does — and, for the first time, it doesn’t bother him. They’ll talk about this further tomorrow, when they’re a bit less high, and that doesn’t bother him either. Whatever comes next, they’ll get through it together.


End file.
